The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet A Novel

The novel is set in 1799 on Dejima, a high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island in Nagasaki Harbor that serves as the Dutch East India Company's sole trading post and the Japanese Empire's single window onto the West. Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young Dutch clerk, arrives with the intention of cleaning up the rampant corruption and earning a fortune to win the hand of his fiancée back in Holland. His life is irrevocably changed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and an intelligent midwife. Their forbidden relationship and Jacob's struggles against the corrupt system and restrictive Japanese laws lead to a dramatic turn when Orito is spirited away to a sinister mountain temple cult, forcing Jacob to confront betrayal, clashing civilizations, and the limits of his own integrity.

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